Some embodiments described herein relate generally to enterprise networks, and, in particular, to methods and apparatus for converging wired and wireless networks into one unified enterprise network architecture.
Some known enterprise networks manage wired sessions and wireless sessions separately, which leads to wired traffic and wireless traffic being forwarded separately in the enterprise network. The separation of wired and wireless traffic, however, results in inefficiencies and increased complexity in the enterprise network, such as user-based policy applications and services being duplicated for the wired and wireless networks. Also, maintaining consistency between user policies across the wired and wireless networks is a challenge.
Some other known enterprise networks handle wired and wireless traffic together by converting packets of wireless sessions (e.g., IEEE 802.11 packets) to packets of wired sessions (e.g., Ethernet packets) at wireless access points before transmitting them to access switches. Although the converting method results in a unified data path for a portion of the wired traffic and the wireless traffic, it does not provide converged policy enforcement or services for wired and wireless clients of the enterprise network.
Accordingly, a need exists for a converged wired/wireless enterprise network architecture with access to information and services based on a user identity.